In the manufacture of pin-populated, rigid printed wiring boards (also referred to as a backplane), the boards must often be transported from place to place in their finished form with pins projecting from both surfaces of the board. Unless the support for the boards is sufficient to shield both ends of the pins from inadvertent contact with other objects, the pins may well be bent or otherwise deformed. This may be costly to rectify and may actually cause a board to be scrapped.
In the manufacture of such pin-populated, rigid boards, the pins must be inserted in the board in predetermined, and possibly quite extensive patterns. It is very easy for errors to occur in these patterns. Errors can be impossible or at least costly and time-consuming to repair; and repair may require a higher level of skills that the original assembly. A reusable shuttle of the type disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 326,103 filed on Nov. 30, 1981 (which is a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 192,271 filed on Sept. 30, 1980) can carry pins arranged to populate a tranverse row on a board. As a row of pins is to be mounted in the board, the shuttle holding that row of pins is taken up, and the pins are transferred into a pin-insertion head for subsequent pressing into preexisting holes in the board. A large number of these shuttles with pins appropriately loaded therein must be arranged in a particular order so as to avoid errors in mounting the pins in the rigid board.
A carrier is needed to carry these pin-supporting shuttles in such a way that the pins are protected from injury and are kept in their desired arrangement from the time the shuttles are first loaded with pins until the pins are transferred into the pin-insertion head.
Consequently, there is a need for a tray which can efficiently carry and protect either the loaded shuttles or the rigid boards with pins mounted therein.